However I need some help remembering when and with who to instigate the aforementioned brawls. I cannot recall the appropriate stick slaps and their corresponding opportunities. The penalty for ramming whatever poor sod in possession of the puck into the barricades still eludes me.

Oh, I also can’t remember what a deke is.

Though, from what I gather, it’s just the way Canadians pronounce duck... Ziiiiiiiiing?

NHL 14 has no interest in initiating the uninformed.

NHL 14 is for hardened veterans.

Despite a trio of play styles, buttons or thumbstick or classic NHL 97, there is no real effort made to show you the ropes. Unlike ropes, Ice Hockey must be self explanatory.

Similarly a trio of admirably different play styles take the form of High Impact, Arcade or Full On Simulation. However even at the sillier, full octane end a certain prerequisite knowledge is presumed of the player.

And when developers presume, they make disgruntled buggers out of you and me.

So, those of you approximately fleetingly familiar (or of lower rank) with Ice Hockey Puck Ball will struggle to discern why you can start basic third person fisticuffs with only some Ice Hockos.

You might wonder at the benefit of diving onto your front when the opposition can just skate AROUND YOUR PRONE PADDED FORM!

And it remains a mystery why my take-out-the-legs-with-my-stick-whacker tactic incurred the wrath of enforcers sometimes, and indeed referees at others. Often there was no consequence at all. Besides hilarity.

NHL 14 robs an impact engine from FIFA, a scrapping engine from FIGHT NIGHT, and transplants both its Be A Pro and Ultimate Team modes from the wider EA Sports cannon. NHL 14 is fast and fluid. It’s frantic and frenzied and the result of formative, decades long design.